NHL Expansion: Seattle More Worthy of NHL Than Las Vegas
While the NHL Expansion Has Brought Hockey to Las Vegas, a City That May Have Deserved It More Was the One That Produced the First American Team to Win the Stanley Cup.
Let’s take a walk back in time to when the NHL wasn’t a thing. Long before NHL expansion was dominating headlines. If you’re a true hockey fan, you know that the Stanley Cup is the oldest competitive trophy in existence. The Stanley Cup is one of a kind.
The Seattle Metropolitans competed in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association. A league made up of Western cities. As a fun fact, the PCHA was the first league to consider a women’s hockey league.
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The league would only last for 12 years, but in this league was a hockey club that produced five Hall of Famers. The Seattle Metropolitans were able to compete immediately following their founding because they managed to raid the Toronto Blue Shirts of the failing National Hockey Association.
The club competed at the now demolished Seattle Ice Arena on Fifth Avenue. Sadly in 1963, the rink was demolished, only to be replaced by the IBM Building.
So let’s look at their success. The Seattle Metropolitans founded in 1915 would quickly become the first US-based hockey team to win the Stanley Cup. The team dominated the PCHA, and won five league titles in their nine seasons. The team competed for three Stanley Cups, winning their first in 1917. The second in 1919 would be canceled due to the Spanish Flu, and then the Metropolitans would lose to the Ottawa Senators in 1920.
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It would appear that Seattle is preoccupied with bringing an NBA franchise back to the city. Fans felt cheated as Howard Schultz sold the team only to see it moved to Oklahoma City.
Often times, NBA stadiums double as ice rinks. And local Seattle businessman Chris Hansen has been aggressively pursuing an NBA team in Seattle. What could turn the tide is if Hansen turned his attention to the NHL expansion committee, who have been looking at Seattle as a potential NHL expansion city. Doubling the stadium as a both an NBA and NHL stadium could change the perception of the city council who voted against Hansen’s proposed stadium on the waterfront.
The concern was that the stadium could hurt the overall job health of the area. Now if the stadium doubles as an ice rink and basketball court the number of jobs it creates go up. It could be the difference between a successful measure or a rejected one.
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When I go around asking people which US hockey team won the Stanley Cup first, they don’t always know the answer. When I tell people it was Seattle, they seem shocked. Seattle’s history of hockey is just as important as that of Boston or Chicago. And while Las Vegas brings some excitement, Seattle brings its history.
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